Thanksgiving 101 by Rick Rodgers

In early May of this year, my mother received a total knee replacement. Because the surgery was scheduled not long after my cousin’s wedding, many of our relatives were still in the Bay Area when she went into the hospital. One of them was her own mother, my grandmother, who was visiting from Taiwan. E and I volunteered to keep her “company” (out of my mom’s hair) on the day of the surgery, and she stayed overnight with us for the first night afterward. Even though we couldn’t be at the hospital with my mother, I think we helped her out immensely, and this arrangement was better—she didn’t have to worry about taking care of her 80-year-old mother while undergoing major surgery.

The next day, we were instructed to entertain Grandma for as long as possible before driving her to the hospital to visit, but she was having none of it. Her daughter was there, and that’s where she wanted to be. I tried taking my time with breakfast, and we put on the single television station in Chinese for her while E and I came up with various excuses for not being ready to leave right away. Finally, we couldn’t stall any longer. She refused to stay for lunch. I decided to drive the hour to the hospital area, then stop at a restaurant there.

So we piled into the car and situated her in the front passenger seat, where we then spent several minutes adjusting the many knobs that control the seat position before she was finally comfortable. The seat back was reclined halfway down and she slid lower in the seat so that her neck craned forward oddly. She claimed this to be perfect, and we set off.

At the top of our street, we made a left turn and E pointed to the right and exclaimed, “Look!”

Standing on the sidewalk was a turkey.

Our neighborhood is a quintessential Californian suburb. Small lots, manicured lawns, sidewalks, hedges and whitewashed fences. I pulled the car over and we gawked at the turkey. I’m not sure if I had ever seen a live turkey before. And definitely not one strolling around a residential neighborhood. It seemed completely unperturbed by the attention and just stood there, looking around.

As I pulled away, I said, “Grandma, did you see that?”

She hadn’t, since her head was below the level of the window. E and I, however, spent the car ride marveling at the idea of a turkey walking around our neighborhood.

Since then, I have seen the turkey about once a week. Often, it stands in the middle of the road looking about. I have seen other cars pull over to stare at it as well. E and I often speculate about its origins. He’s not so sure that it’s the same turkey we see every time. “Wasn’t that one smaller than the first one?” he asked. I believe it is the same one, because… well, what are the chances of there being two turkeys in our neighborhood?

I still think that the turkey belongs to some neighborhood family who is fattening it up for Thanksgiving. And whoever this is seems to believe in the free range concept. After all, why build a fence (or is it a coop?) when the turkey needs only a temporary residence, and anyway, who’s going to steal a turkey off the street? But then I imagine the children of the family on the day before Thanksgiving, with their tear-stained cheeks, hugging the turkey they have named Fluffy goodbye as their father drives off to the butcher. And I hope I’m wrong.

We just won’t know until after Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 101 by Rick Rodgers

Tags: cookbooks total+knee+replacement thanksgiving turkeys Rick+Rodgers